Ending The Pain
by Fifth Horseman
Summary: Third Impact was averted, but that doesn't mean the pain has ended.


I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion or the rights to anything associated with it. Gainax created this world, I just play in it.

An offering from the darker side of the Fifth Horseman. Sometimes my mind is not a pleasant place to be.

Hope you like it. And please review, I enjoy the feedback.

**Ending The Pain**

It had been done. Third Impact had been averted. A great many lives had been lost and horrendous damage had been done to the fortress city of Tokyo 3. Dead soldiers, mangled aircraft and overturned and burning vehicles had littered the torn landscape. NERV was in ruins, the great pyramid was heavily damaged and its hallways were littered with the butchery of the commando raid. Unit 02 lay in the GeoFront with a lance piercing its head. Unit 01 stood nearby like a silent sentinel, the Lance of Longinus gripped in its massive purple hands. Littering the ground around it were the shredded remains of nine, white mass production Eva's, abominations that, like their masters at SEELE, would never rise again.

The old men had been found in their private bunker, the place where they had met to witness their crowning achievement of Instrumentality. They lived long enough to see a fourteen year old boy find himself and defy their will and that of his father. At the moment they realized that all of their years of planning, scheming and manipulations had been for naught, they began to feel the effects of a particularly nasty nerve gas as it seeped into their bunker through the ventilation system. It took them a long time to die, a time during which they were painfully reminded that their utopian dreams had failed.

* * *

Two weeks had passed since the day of the final battle. Two gruelling, pain filled weeks. Asuka Langley Sohryu sat in the ruins of her best friend's house, Hikari being safe and sound in Tokyo 2. She removed the eye patch covering her left eye to reveal the now pale and cloudy iris dotting her blood filled eyeball. The pain in her head was threatening to drive her crazy, or at least crazier than she already was. He was right. She was crazy.

The massive ego she had constructed after her mother's suicide to cover her pain and hide her damaged heart from the world had done more damage to her than it had done good. She was lonely. She had driven away everyone who had dared to try and care for her and touch her heart. No one was good enough. She was supposed to be the best, but she had been bested time and again by someone who seemed to owe more to destiny than skill.

She discovered far too late that she had feelings for Shinji. She had gone too far, hurt him too many times, including after the last battle. He had saved her once again when the MP Evas she had defeated started moving again and she had screamed insults at him. She had hit him and told him that she hated him.

She was tired. Tired of Angels and Evas, SEELE and NERV, tired of herself. She picked up a shard of a broken mirror and looked at herself. Her face was drawn and she looked haggard, her damaged eye mocking everything she had thought she was.

* * *

Two weeks had passed since the day of the final battle. Two gruelling, pain filled weeks. Ritsuko Akagi stood on the bullet scarred command bridge in Central Dogma. Her left shoulder throbbed painfully as she adjusted the sling supporting her arm. A bullet meant for her heart had gone through her shoulder instead, an irony she didn't fail to notice. He was right. She had no heart.

She had given it away to a lover who didn't care. The things she had done for his scenario had proven that she had no heart. She did terrible things, not because she believed in the scenario, but because she had sold her soul to its master. He used her, mentally and physically and then threw her away, just like he did with her mother.

She had desired love and had ended up settling for the illusion of love. An illusion he was all too glad to provide her with as he used her body for his pleasure, often roughly, and used her mind for his selfish, obsessive purpose. She had abused others on his behalf and had driven away her only true friend, the only person she could have confided in, should have confided in, but she let her own self importance keep his secrets.

She stood on the edge of the railing, looking down at the mesmerizing sight of the cold concrete floor, thirty feet below. Is this how her mother felt before she let go? She hadn't gotten along well with her mother, but she felt herself to be closer to her and understanding her more now than she ever had before.

* * *

Two weeks had passed since the day of the final battle. Two gruelling, pain filled weeks. Misato Katsuragi staggered down a dusty corridor deep in Central Dogma. She shouldn't be here, she shouldn't be on her feet, hell, she shouldn't be out of the hospital. The burning pain in the right side of her chest and her laboured breathing told her that was a certainty, but she was here anyway. She had to be.

This was where Kaji's body was.

She knew it wouldn't be a pleasant sight, but she couldn't stay away. He was right. She was responsible for her lover's death just as surely as if she had pulled the trigger herself. She had pushed to know the truth, knowing that if she gave him her body, Kaji would find what she wanted. Then again, Kaji would have taken her body regardless of the motivation. She had given it to him long ago to dirty herself, to destroy the good girl she became tired of trying to be as a child. He had taken it willingly, doing everything to it that she wanted him to and then some.

But her body and Kaji hadn't been the only ones she had sacrificed on her personal altar. Rei. Asuka. Shinji. She had used them all to get her revenge upon Adam for the destruction of Second Impact. The destruction of her father. The destruction of her innocence. Second Impact had broken her and everything that came after was so she could gain her vengeance. She sent children into battle while she stood in the almost certain safety of Central Dogma, issuing them their orders. She was a fraud. She desired revenge but didn't dirty her own hands to accomplish it. She was a drunk and a whore and she was sick to death of herself.

She came across his body almost without warning. He lay on the bloodstained concrete in front of a large ventilation fan. It had served to suck the moisture out of the air in the place where he lay, effectively causing a form of mummification. His skin was dark, dried and wrinkled, looking like old leather. They had shot him and just left him there, knowing that he would not be found for a long time. Crying, she slid down the wall until she was seated on the cold floor. Fumbling inside her jacket with her left hand, she finally was able to draw her pistol and flicked off the safety.

* * *

Nearly three weeks had passed since the final battle. The last week had been especially brutal for Shinji Ikari. His new found sense of worth and well being was gone and had been replaced by an unfeeling emptiness that was worse than anything he had ever known.

He stood in the cemetery, looking upon the graves of four people who had become closer to him than anyone ever had. He had shed his tears for these people the night before, endeavouring to stand strong here today as they were laid to rest. Despite the throbbing pain in his torn up left knee, a gift from the final battle, he had chosen to stand throughout the funerals and lean on his crutches to show his respect. For once in his life, despite whatever pain he was feeling, be it mental or physical, he was determined to stand up on his own two feet and be counted.

They had found Asuka sitting peacefully in a chair in the middle of Hikari's house as if asleep, her wrists slit open and the floor slick with her blood. He had loved Asuka. She called him stupid, she called him a pervert, she insulted him for everything he ever did, be it right or wrong. During the final battle she had bitched constantly that he wasn't there to help. When he did show up and finished off the reviving MP Evas, she screamed and yelled at him again for taking so long just so he could show her up and be Invincible Shinji again. Before he could say a word she had punched him in the mouth and screamed that she hated him. He had stood up on his good leg, looked her in the eye and sadly shook his head before hobbling away. Despite everything she did to him, he still loved her.

They had found Ritsuko lying dead on the floor at the bottom of the command centre, her body as broken as her spirit. Shinji hadn't totally forgiven her for what she did to Rei's clones, but he knew that his father had driven her to that madness. She hadn't treated him badly and he did think she was essentially a good person, but like all of them she was a victim and his father was the victimizer. He could identify with her to a degree, she was lonely and had wanted someone to love her, but she had made a poor choice. He wished that he had gotten to know the better side of Ritsuko Akagi, the softer and fun side he had heard about from Misato.

In the short time he had known Kaji, the unshaven spy had been more of a father figure to him than Gendo ever had. Kaji had always seemed to be there to offer him some timely advice when it was most needed. If you took away the womanizing attitude, Shinji would have liked to have been as self assured and carefree as Kaji was.

And then there was his Misa-chan. God how he loved that purple haired, scantily clad, mischievous, beer guzzling woman. By the time he fully realized just how much he had come to love her, her pain had devoured her, leaving her feeling that she had no choice but to eat her gun. He had been drowning in his own pain and self pity for so long that he didn't see her pain until it was too late. The last straw for him was when he had covered his head like a coward so he could drown out the sound of her tears when Kaji died. The incident with Kaworu had nearly destroyed him and caused him to cut himself off from her completely. It wasn't until the attack on NERV that he began to come out of it.

On the day of the battle, he had found himself. Something had clicked in his desperate, wounded mind. Misato had found him cowering under a stairwell, waiting patiently for a JSSDF soldier to release him from his personal hell with a 9mm painkiller. She had charged in, risking her life for his worthless one. When he heard the spite in her words as she killed the last man, he felt something click in his mind. He had been looking for someone to care about him for all of his life and he she had been right in front of him ever since he came to Tokyo 3. It had taken a little time and a lot of words from her to cut through his fog, but she had finally gotten through to him.

She succeeded in getting him to an elevator that would take him to his Eva, but not before one of the murdering bastards that had attacked the base had put a bullet in her. She had wanted him to leave her there, but he couldn't. He wouldn't. He would rather die there with her than leave her to die alone. She grabbed him and kissed him, making a promise, trying to shock him into action, but he didn't fall for it. He knew why she did it, but he also knew that she had put all of the love and emotion she could into that kiss, making sure that he would never forget it no matter what happened in the next few hours.

He had pulled her into the elevator and took her with him doing what he could for her wound with a first aid kit he found there. He held her tightly, wishing they were anywhere but here, wishing he was older so that he could have been there for her in ways that a fourteen year old boy never could.

When he arrived at the Eva cages he found someone to look after her while he went out and fought, and fight he did. He didn't fight for the world, or for himself. He fought for her and for the faith she had put in him. He would not let her down. He was still scared but he was committed to making sure that even if he didn't survive the battle, no one would be able to say that he was a coward and that he hadn't tried his best.

He stayed until the graves had been filled in and he was left alone so he could say a private goodbye to them all. After paying his respects, he hobbled out of the cemetery and to the car that was waiting for him. As the burial grounds disappeared behind him, he let his anger resume its place at the front of his mind. He removed a compact disc from the inside pocket of his black suit and regarded it thoughtfully. In three weeks he had changed, his personality doing almost a complete one eighty. He no longer ran and hid from things, he would now confront his issues head on. He knew what had pushed Asuka, Ritsuko, and Misato to take their own lives and he was going to confront that issue.

With extreme prejudice.

* * *

Gendo Ikari sat at his ornate desk, in his cavernous office, like a reigning king. With a cigar in his left hand and a glass of rare scotch within easy reach, he celebrated his victory. It wasn't the victory he had intended, but he was adaptable.

His plans to be reunited with Yui had been thwarted, but he was nothing if not vindictive and he had quickly planned and executed his revenge. He had been responsible for the nerve gas attack that had put an end to SEELE, an act that he felt absolutely no remorse over. He had planned it well before the day of the final battle, his own intelligence network discovering where the old men would be. He had even made sure to obtain the video logs from their bunker and he had enjoyed every moment of their slow, agonizing deaths.

His revenge against those who had thwarted him actually started with Rei while the attack was in progress. She had used her AT field to rip out and crush the embryonic Adam that was grafted to his right hand. Her effort left her momentarily weak enough that he was able to attack her before she could use that same AT Field to defend herself. He beat her severely and threw her limp body into an empty LCL chamber and sealed her in, never to be thought of again. He had created the ungrateful little bitch and given her life a purpose and she had betrayed him. She wouldn't be doing that again.

Four days later he began to enact his plan against the rest of them. He would plant the seeds of despair in their minds and time, along with their already existing fears, would see those dark seeds grow and flourish.

The first of them had been Pilot Sohryu. She was fragile and easily convinced that she was crazy and worthless, of no consequence to anybody since she had alienated anyone who had ever given a damn about her.

Ritsuko had been just as easy, he had already broken her and it took little for him to convince her that she had no worth left to anyone. She was socially inept, only able to attract a man who was willing to use her and she was content to be used. He told her that while she may be a brilliant scientist, she was a failure as a woman.

Katsuragi had been a harder nut to crack, but she had been ripe for the taking. She had a multitude of problems that he could use against her, but the freshest open wound was Kaji. He convinced her that it was her incessant need to discover the truth of NERV that had resulted in his death. Once he had driven that into her, he used her slovenly behaviour and her use of others to seek her revenge to batter her down.

The last one was Shinji and the deaths of the others was his punishment. He had told Shinji that he was responsible for all of it. By finally finding a spine he had served to leave mankind to suffer and his friends to suffer the most. By defeating the MP Evas and not allowing them to take him, he had left them all to be devoured by their demons. He was always a failure, was meant to be nothing but a failure, and he couldn't even do that right.

Now, with Asuka, Ritsuko, Kaji and Misato freshly buried, he knew his son would begin to suffer in earnest. Even if he didn't take his own life, he would carry the guilt for the remainder of it. It would eat him alive like a cancer and he would enjoy watching it happen. Revenge was indeed a dish best served cold.

Needless to say, it was a surprise to Gendo when Shinji hobbled into his office that evening.

* * *

"Surprised to see me Rokubungi?" Shinji asked, his voice full of loathing.

"I am your father and your commander," Gendo said firmly, trying to exercise his authority. "You will address me as Father or Commander Ikari."

Shinji did something Gendo didn't expect. He laughed. It was bitter, and hate filled. "You have never been a father to me and I will no longer acknowledge you as such. As for being 'Commander Ikari', you no longer command anything and Ikari was my mothers name. You don't deserve to wear it."

"Such a disrespectful child," Gendo said with great disinterest. "So why have you so rudely invited yourself into my office."

Shinji pulled the disk out of his pocket and threw it on the desk. "That disk contains the sound records of your little motivational talks with Asuka, Ritsuko and Misato. You never knew that Ritsuko had put a bug in your cell phone before you threw her in the brig did you? Every word you've said since then that was within twenty feet of your phone was captured and recorded by the MAGI."

Gendo kept a neutral expression on his face. "How did you get it?"

"I'm not stupid," Shinji answered. "I do know a thing or two about computers. I was told that something like this might exist so I tried looking for it. I think the aspects of Ritsuko's mom that make up the MAGI felt sorry for me."

He didn't tell Gendo that it was a distraught Maya Ibuki who had told him that the information existed in the first place.

"So what do you intend to do with it?"

"Nothing," Shinji answered as he put his right hand into the outside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a gun. "I'm going to kill the king of all bastards while he sits high on his throne."

He fired, missing high and to the left. His lack of familiarity with firearms costing him his chance. Before he could correct his aim, Gendo drew the gun he kept hidden under his desk and shot him in the stomach. Shinji went down hard, his crutches falling away to clatter loudly against the polished floor. He groaned and clutched his wound with both hands, bright red blood seeping between his fingers.

"Long live the king," Gendo told his son as he set the gun down and threw back the remainder of his scotch. However, his face froze in disbelief when he heard a soft, female voice speak into his right ear.

"The king is dead."

A pair of slender white hands locked around his throat and began to squeeze. Gendo found himself staring into the crimson orbs of an enraged Rei Ayanami. She leaned into him, pushing his chair up against the desk so her victim couldn't roll away from her and so she could use what little weight she had as leverage to strangle the man who created her.

Gendo clawed at her hands, his heavily bandaged right hand not being of much help. She looked tired and weak, but her grip was strong. Her ever present school uniform hid most of the damage he knew he had done to her body, the healing bruises and contusions to her face and arms the only evidence visible. He began kicking at her legs and flailing his hands at her face. He opened a cut on her right cheek and landed a solid hit to her ribs with his right knee, but her grip never slackened. He wrapped his legs around her waist and squeezed as hard as he could, trying to break ribs or squeeze the air out of her before she could do it to him. He landed another blow that split open her upper lip and he felt a couple of her ribs break, but it didn't help. Her grip didn't slacken, she didn't flinch or cry out in pain. The only sign of exertion was a bead of sweat that rolled down the side of her face.

Blackness was entering the edge of his vision as he clawed frantically for his gun with his left hand. He finally found it and he could feel his consciousness fading as he managed to wedge it between them and fired. The only indication she gave that she had been shot was a widening of her eyes.

"I will not die before you do," she told him in her eerily quiet voice. With a final hard push she turned the chair away from the desk and knocked them over backwards. All of her weight came down through her slender arms, the force of their landing crushing his windpipe.

Rei fell off to her left, landing on her broken ribs. She finally allowed herself to feel the pain and cried out. When that pain became tolerable again she reached out and took the gun from Gendo's left hand and put two rounds through his head, ensuring that the bastard would never rise again. She tossed it aside and looked down at her wound. She knew the bullet had gone through her S2 organ and, judging by the dark colour of the blood, her liver too.

"Rei?" she heard Shinji's voice weakly call to her. She crawled around the desk and went to him. His wound looked as bad as hers and neither of them would live much longer.

She took his hand as she lay down beside him. "I am here Shinji."

"He's dead?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry Rei," he said tearfully. "I'm sorry I turned away from you when I found out about your origins. You were my friend and I abandoned you."

"I forgive you Shinji. And I am still your friend."

He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. They closed their eyes and they slowly faded away, hoping that their souls would be reunited with the others somewhere on the other side.

* * *

I told you my mind can be a disturbing place, so thanks for stepping into the shadows and reading this. Reviews are welcomed, greatly appreciated, and highly encouraged.

And please, check out my other stories. You know how to find them.

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To be truthful I always thought this story was sorely lacking. I wrote it too quickly and did not pay as much attention to what I was doing as I have done with everything else. So, on 11/04/10 I released a rewrite called _Out Of Misery. _Please check it out, I think you will find it is better than this one.


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